1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an information processing apparatus that is adapted to execute information processing using, for example, metadata (related information associated with sound information) attached to unit sound information equivalent to a music unit and information contents forming electronic program guide information concerning television broadcast and a method for the information processing apparatus. The present invention also relates to a computer program executed by such an information processing apparatus.
2. Description of the Related Art
A portable content player including, as storage media that stores data as contents, a semiconductor storage element represented by an HD (Hard Disk) or a flash memory is widely spread. Such a portable content player can store content data as, for example, an audio file and a video file in a built-in storage medium, manage the content data, and reproduce the content data stored in this way according to, for example, predetermined reproduction operation. Sound of the content data reproduced in this way is outputted from, for example, a headphone terminal included in the portable content player as a audio signal for headphone driving. An image of the reproduced content data is displayed on, for example, a display panel included in the portable content player.
Today, services of a terrestrial digital television broadcast are started in Japan. As one of the services, a broadcast for mobile terminals such as a cellular phone called “1 seg” is also performed. Since the 1 seg adopts a digital television system, as an advantage of the 1 seg, a high image quality is stably obtained in an image of resolution that is necessary for the mobile terminals. In future, it is expected that the 1 seg will be further spread.
Under such circumstances, as a current portable apparatus and the like, for example, as represented by cellular phones in these days, combined machines having both a function of storing audio and video contents and reproducing and outputting the contents and a function of receiving a television broadcast in the 1 seg and outputting images and sound of the television broadcast to allow a user to view and listen to the images and sound are known.
As a patent document related to the technique in the past, there is JP-A-2002-152639.